Leeds United's new leader on post-Wembley meeting, team fines and fan encounters

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Football, like it or not, has changed unrecognisably in just about every sense and pre-season tours like the one Leeds United are on reflect just that.

Listen to any of the podcasts presented by ex-professionals and some of the stories of their shenanigans on foreign trips and it all contrasts very starkly with the modern day picture. All-in-one hotel complexes with every conceivable and desirable fitness and training facility, an army of coaching staff and backroom employees monitoring every activity and everything that passes a player's lips and sessions in heat that would reveal any hint of a hangover within seconds.

Players know what they're meant to do and what they're not meant to do. That was never more evident than when a group rocked up to a bar on a training camp in the not-so-distant past, spotted their friendly local journalists having dinner and promptly turned on their heels and fled back to the team hotel. All but two, anyway. On another occasion a gaggle of young players were spotted in a corner shop, furtively discussing who had a bag that they could use to smuggle sweets into the hotel and checking with an uninvolved player that he wouldn't 'grass.' The rock n' roll days that Leeds first team security chief Martin Sykes could undoubtedly tell you about have long since passed, shooed away in no little part by the perception and the accountability brought by camera phones and social media.

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On this trip the most worrying he might have to do is whether or not players will find their way back safely from a trip to a village ice cream parlour that has caught their eye. This is every inch the professional era and Ethan Ampadu has known no different since breaking into the men's game as a precocious 15-year-old.

"I don't know [about the old days] not really being part of those times I couldn't tell you," he said. "But ever since I've known pre-season, of course you try and have moments where you can enjoy an afternoon free but really and truly you're here to work hard and get ready for the season. So in whichever way you can do that is the best way and for us it's working hard and making sure that we're not leaving any stone unturned. Pre-season camp the main objective is hard work. Get yourself ready for the season, especially that first game, obviously set ourselves off on the right foot, the right tone and especially compared to last season. That's something we can learn from. We don't want to reflect too much, that process has been and gone. But yeah, pre-season here, so it's all about working hard, making sure you're ready for the season and trying to enjoy it as well."

A textbook answer from a player with a textbook attitude. That's not to say that he and his peers don't know how to let their hair down, it's just that this is not really the time or place for that. One of the big selling points of Leeds' particular training base this time, cited by Daniel Farke, is that it's almost a little bit 'boring' for the players so they don't get tempted or distracted from the objective, which is to do this season what they could not quite do last time round.

"As a team and as a squad, all the staff, the day after [the play-off final] we all came in [for a meeting," he said. "Obviously it was very flat. That was obviously addressed because we didn't achieve our goal for the season. But yeah, the season was addressed. Sort of not put aside but that chapter was done and it was all about then going off, having your break and then just making sure that you come back mentally and physically prepared for what we want, to have a big season."

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Ampadu enjoyed himself for the most part during a debut campaign with Leeds. Having experienced the wrong end of league tables with previous clubs, it had to be a breath of fresh air to win so many matches and fight it out at the top of the Championship. A big part of that enjoyment was the famed Leeds experience: "When I was about to join and when I had first joined everyone was telling me how big of a club Leeds is, which I knew, I'm not daft. I know that but like you say it's not really until once you're here, you're part of it, you put on the shirt, you walk out at Elland Road, not even just that when you're at away games, every game sort of still feels like a home game.

"Just walking around, just being on holiday, you know, Leeds fans everywhere. So it's nice. It's nice to have the interactions. I know you said about what happened on the pitch at the end but it was a really enjoyable season. It's really hard for me to say that because we didn't achieve what we wanted to achieve, but if you put that aside it was enjoyable."

Enjoyment is an interesting concept in the upper echelons of the professional game, because the demands are so high and the stakes even higher. In the Championship the games come so thick and fast that, if not careful, a player could become quite robotic in their routine and forget to remember why they play the game in the first place.

"Across my career I'm not afraid to say I've had a lot of lows in terms of not achieving objectives that me and maybe as a team collectively, in previous teams, we didn't achieve," said Ampadu. "It's easy to say when you're winning games most weeks that you do enjoy it a little bit more. Throughout the last year something I learned was not to get too low in the bad moments. I'm probably one of the worst for it initially after a result being quite low, wanting to have a bit of time to yourself. But also, I've got a family and a little one and I think that helps also to sort of take you away from that, to try and make sure you do enjoy it because as a lot of people will tell you football, unfortunately the career doesn't last forever. So whilst you're in these moments, you have to take every little bit and enjoy it through the good and the bad."

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And though he broke through so early at Exeter and has already been through more than many of his peers, Ampadu is still in his early 20s. A young man, still learning the game with many years ahead of him. It's just that there are much, much younger players around him now looking up to him, players six, seven, eight years his junior. Ampadu wore the armband last season and less than 24 hours after his YEP interview was named club captain by the manager. He hopes he can help this latest crop of youngsters to follow him into the senior game.

"We've got quite a young team," he said. "Obviously we've still got a few experienced pros who help out, who try and give the younger guys all their experience and for me, it's the same. I don't really want to call myself an experienced player. Of course, I've played in a few leagues and I've played a few games but I'm still only 23 as well. So I'm still learning as it goes. But obviously whenever a younger player comes in you see how much they're excited to be involved with the first team and you just want to try and make it easy for them to settle in so they can play their best and train their best. Let's be honest, we were all at that stage at one point. The easier you find it to try and play your own game, obviously the better you can look. It's just really trying to make the younger guys feel comfortable but also know that there's a lot of hard work that we need to do, not just me but us as players every week every day."

His advice to the teenagers in the camp as they set out on their own journeys and attempt to convince Farke of their place in the squad is, of course, characteristically textbook. "I don't want to say I honestly wish I'd done it, because I would hope that a lot of people who might have known me at that time can say this about me, but work hard every day," he said. "I know everyone goes on about it but that's the only thing, work hard every single day, every single moment, whether that's Saturday or training. Activation you know making sure that you get yourself right for training. In the training session everyone has mistakes, I still make mistakes now which I get frustrated at but it's normal and I think if you don't get frustrated then maybe you don't care, but learning how to deal with that and just move on to the next phase of the game. Just little things like that."

And beyond that, try not to fall foul of the fines that are in place. Ampadu signed for Sheffield United on the same day as Jayden Bogle. When the latter turned up on Sunday evening after completing a move to follow his ex-Blades team-mate to Leeds, Ampadu turned instantly to Sam Byram to ask if there was a fine for the new boy, for showing up late. Byram, as it happens, did not volunteer to be in charge of the fines. He was volunteered. Footballers, even this ultra professional bunch of athletes carrying the present-day game, have a seemingly relentless desire to get one over on another and cost each other money. Some things, at least, may never change.

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"Sam Byram - I'm not sure if he really wanted the role but when someone asked who's on fines I just said Sam," said Ampadu. "But now it's sort of up and running now, I think he's secretly enjoying it. I don't know [what the money is going towards]. I hope it's not for his house or anything, do you know what I mean? I hope it's not for any of them free afternoons he might have."

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